âNah. Fuck mermaids. Probably smell of⌠salmon. Gonna fuckinâ⌠sashimi them. Bastards,â Jude got out with a vague gesticulation, some limp thing his arm couldnât quite commit to. At her impression of him, he narrowed his eyes to a squint, molars clenched to keep his mouth in a vice â not that it was necessary, anyway, an inanimate thing, some malnourished prisoner no longer able to push up in his cell by the elbows. It wasnât something he thought on but if he did, heâd realise he hadnât properly smiled since Provincetown. That probably didnât even count, anyway, chemical additives considered. Again, though, it wasnât like he thought about it. Lately, it wasnât like he thought much about anything. There was an empty train tunnel in his head, wind howled through. Rats scuttling along the rungs. A drip from the top brick he couldnât be bothered to plug. âBloody hellâs fuckinâ⌠Harry Potter propaganda, Rosalind. Ron⌠fucked it for the rest of us, the scrawny ginger cunt.â Jude barely reacted as he always did, when she screamed. There couldâve been a fire blazing full throttle on the stove in the next room and Jude would probably still sit there idly smoking, ashing onto the carpet, eyes on a television only screening white noise. Staring through it, rather than at it. Staring at something else on the other side, something that held a lead weight in his chest rather than a name. Even her confession didnât rile anything visible from him, not on the surface. I missed you. Dating Saskia, heâd come to see admissions like these as a cat dropping a dead bird in itâs ownerâs lap, something with good intentions that was never well received. Heâd never react the same but it still made him pause, remembering. He wasnât sure what to do with it, words like an ornament he could only mutely stare at, something to appraise on a mantel and never interact with.Â
Unconventional in the lax of his grip, his hand slid from her fingers to briefly sit a thumb on her wrist. Intentions unclear to him. Testing for a pulse, perhaps â seeking comfort in the thump of hers, the reminder that someone like her was alive. It slipped in barely a second, eyes cast down the roofâs slant where the teapot descended. He wasnât particularly conscious of taking a seat, not even of the slates jutting his ass like the under-bite of an orc with jagged incisors. Instead, the moon took precedent: silver slicking the dew on the lawn, the gutter trembling with earlier rainfall, the crown of Rosaâs head. It illuminated all the edges of her, really. He thought maybe heâd like to paint it. âFuckinâ hell, Rosalind. Just⌠treating me like man meat, weighed at the butchers,â he commented with no conviction when she raised his pant leg, pausing in a one fingered itch at the scruff on his jaw to watch her. âYou about to take control? Make me, uh⌠cancan?â Eyes glinting with something unreadable, the compliment went by like water off a duckâs back, short pull of whiskey washing down the itch on his tongue â it wanted to do something, the longer he spent with her, some internal wrestle that mightâve made him grimace if noticed on somebody else. He almost felt guilty for it, at times, the places his brain went, stumbling so fast down the gutter heâd reached the sewer in seconds. Brow subtly furrowed in a bid to zone in, Jude took a moment to reach out and accept the card, unsure at first what it was he was looking at. From the way Rosa blathered, anyone would think she was attempting to sell a reluctant buyer on a steep six bedroom, not explain a sweet gesture. It made something inside him gently pang, staring at the Biro scrawl, extent to which she believed in him a bit overwhelming. He wasnât typically a person of many words but he usually at least had something. Do you remember that day? He held onto the question like a glass marble, grasped gently in a fist so it wouldnât roll or break. A thumb carefully skimmed the letters, moving at snail pace. Heâd known a feeling like this, once, when Joyce brought him in from the hallways of his building â heâd been roaming to avoid going inside, slapping a pack of cigarettes against an open palm. The bruise around his eye was an unhappy accident, drunken elbow gone awry, but he didnât realise how much it hurt until she called him in and sat him down, tending with a rag that dripped on his t-shirt. Being cared for. It was an extraterrestrial feeling. It was a feeling that, for as long as Jude could remember, had green skin and webbed feet, nothing he found familiar. He thought maybe it was nice, this feeling. He thought he could get used to it, if he knew how to trust itâd stay.Â
âVincent,â he repeated low, still touching the card like he had to assure it was real. Subconsciously wetting his lips, his eyes lifted to find her, silhouette still glowing like the moon had to highlight just how special she was. âYeah, IâŚâ trailed off, soft breath leaving his mouth â amused, sure, but for the most part, thoroughly, irrevocably fond. Do you remember that day? It was still clutched in his fist, he realised â the marble, the way sheâd said it. He couldnât put it down. âI, uhâŚâ Studying her rather intently, he barely moved a muscle. He wanted to stay in this moment, for a while. If he stirred too much, he might forget the dream. âI remember all⌠the days, when theyâre⌠with you.â He mightâve winced at the sentimentality in that, if it werenât for her putting far more on the table â even so, his eyes averted, resting on her knee. âHas a ring to it, I think. Vincent. Vinny, if Iâm feeling⌠Italian. If I eat, uh⌠a particularly⌠well done meatball.â Skirting past like he hadnât said it. Typical coping mechanism. Regret was there, though, as soon as he did â part of him didnât want to shy from it, the magnitude of whatever this was, was sick of heading the other direction when he saw a good thing coming. So, he didnât. He looked it â her â right in the face, to the point that it probably felt like the prelude to a kiss, the part where the music swelled before the final crescendo. His eyes drifted all over, taking in everything. Acknowledging every freckle. âThought about you, when I was away. Dunno ifâŚâ Faint twitch breathing life to his mouth at the corners, he just kept staring. He couldnât remember a time where heâd wanted to kiss someone this badly in his life. âDunno if I, uh⌠thought about much else, to be honest.â Jude paused a moment. âYou, uh⌠You can let go of the whiskey, if you want. Donât⌠give a shit about it, andâŚâ faded at the realisation one of his hands had cropped up, dungaree strap held in the loop of thumb and finger. âFuckinâ hell, Rosa.â It almost felt like a joke, how pressed he was for words, when, of everything, she was wearing dungarees. She could probably wear a potato sack and still elicit the same. âThink, uh⌠Think you should probably⌠have your hands free,â came before stalling a second, skim almost humming with it. âBit shit being kissed, otherwise.â
As Jude appraised the contents sheâd all but dumped onto his lap, a struggling weight of boxes on moving day suddenly tossed haphazardly onto the ground with relief, Rosa felt her brain zig zag between panic and alleviation. Judeâs company had been a âdonât know what you have until itâs goneâ situation if sheâd ever experienced one. It wasnât a week after heâd left for England at the beginning of the summer that she was coming up with the name for him, insistence on her boss looking over his art the following one. Like him no longer being a simple text away kicked her brain into hyper gear, itching for him at every corner. Sheâd eventually crawled into herself, a bit. Legs coming up so that her knees were by her chest, resting a cheek on one so she could gaze at him with a somewhat lopsided view - edges pinched so that it didnât seem as daunting. It wasnât seconds after sheâd found herself in this position that she was perking slightly once more anyway, his words causing her heart to skip a beat and that feeling, the numb feeling in her fingers and toes, to return. Sheâd grown to love that feeling, craved it during the summer, but nothing had brought it back until now,  âMe, too,â she said, quickly, overly eager. She was always clinging to bits of affection like this when they came from Jude, which was something of amusement. Affections werenât her thing in general, but even less so in Jude, it seemed - it felt like earning some sort of reward when he offered it up to her, either with a careful touch or his words. People had been less enthusiastic giving acceptance speeches at awards shows than Rosa was now, lapping up his honesty like a cat to a milk saucer. It didnât feel dampened either when he turned the name into a joke, only acknowledging it with a teasing reprimand, barely a pinch to his wrist. It was just Judeâs way - Rosa had grown to accept it, if not become overtly fond by it. Everything he did, really, âFunny. Youâre a funny man,â The way he looked at her then reminded her of the bus ride theyâd taken together, one of the last days theyâd spent in each otherâs companies until now. Sheâd called him out for staring then, the equivalent of poking someone in their ribs when they least expected it to startle a squeak out of them. Jude always stared like he had nothing to lose, like he couldnât think of anything better he wanted to do with his time. So she did the same. Itâd always made her nervous before, being so carefully analyzed, but it felt more wrong than anything this time to even consider looking away.
âMe, too,â she repeated, tone more gentle this time, barely whispering it. The air between them suddenly felt so electrically charged, she was scared to speak too loud, blow a fuse and rid themselves of the atmosphere, âIf it - I think that mightâve been obvious. I couldnât help it,â Referencing to the times sheâd call Jude at particularly lonely nights. Attempting to fill them with anyone else, party music swirling around her, unable to find any sort of satisfaction and eventually seeking out Judeâs voice again, knowing exactly why she wasnât enjoying herself nearly as much as she could have. His instructions left her confused for a few seconds, glancing between him and the whiskey she was still clutching onto, a bottle heâd stolen specifically for this, âBut -,â If she were about to protest, she didnât remember what her reasoning was going to be. Her brain all but turned to mush the second his hand was coming up to carefully loop around one of the delicate straps of her overalls, wording his desires in such a way that it elicited a sharp inhale from her. Her tongue felt like lead in her mouth suddenly, body almost twitching with how overworked with adrenaline it felt, but it was enough that she could utter out a simple, âOkay,â soft, even quieter than her earlier agreement. The bottle felt all too loud when it clattered out of her grasp, puttering down the slope of the roof and catching in the gutters, sat awkwardly at the bottom - if an inanimate object could look desperate to be saved, this came rather close. It still wasnât enough to tug Rosa out of the head space Jude had created with just a few words. It was like sheâd become a completely different person, like his words had activated some hypnotic state in her. Similar to what heâd just done, her hand came up to him, press against his chest - and kept pressing, until he was lying flat against the tilted roof. Only when she was satisfied with his position did she move forward herself, limbs shaky and awkward with excitement. She was close enough that she only had to pivot on her knee to swing her other one over his lap, but far enough that when she did her opposite knee knocked into his hip, clumsy with the need to get as close to him as possible, âSorry,â she huffed out when she felt the unplanned contact, though she didnât sound it in the slightest. There was no real climax or proper build up to it from that point forward - the second she was situated over him, hands splayed on either side of his face for balance, she was leaning in and kissing him as quickly as she could. Itâd almost lack a romantic factor from an outsider point of view, but if there was a mind reader within their radius, theyâd know just how desperate she was for it, how she couldnât remember the last time she wanted something this badly in her entire life, âI missed you,â Even though sheâd said it already, it felt important. It was still inherently fond, but shuttered out of her instead of mumbled at the butt of a joke. It felt like she was confessing to something in church that she didnât actually regret, if the way she punctuated it with another heated press of their mouths together was anything to go by, âI missed you.â